Charm and modesty: crucial weapons in disarming Camilla's critics

But when she does pass on, will the British establishment really pursue their demeaning plan to deny Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles her rightful title of Queen of Great Britain?

I believe that long before then, the present near vilification of Mrs Parker Bowles seen and heard on endless television and radio programmes last week will have not just abated but actually been reversed. We shall see that far from being some demonic home-breaker, Camilla Parker Bowles is in fact a warm, good-humoured, charming and bright woman ideally suited to the heavy task before her.

When the time comes, people will be shocked at the mean-spirited refusal of the Palace authorities to let her assume equal rank and status as her husband, as British law has always hitherto dictated.

Whenever I meet Mrs Parker Bowles - often at book launches - I am struck by the fact that she has actually read the book being celebrated, which is surprisingly unusual on such occasions. Moreover she is always the same whether you meet her at private dinner parties, weddings or big public occasions: she has absolutely no ‘airs’ to her. Her conversation is never dull, never of that defensive quality that so many celebrities and politicians adopt in the presence of people who might quote (or just as likely misquote) them. She also has an engaging smile that might not have Princess Diana’s Hollywood dazzle to it, but has far more sincerity behind it. This, you realise, is a real woman - small wonder Prince Charles has worshipped her for more than three decades.

She is of a recognisable type of no-nonsense British country-women whose charm lies in their modesty and lack of guile. Lunching with her father, Major Bruce Shand, recently, I remarked on the fact that his slim autobiography about his wartime service, Previous Engagements, entirely omitted the surely rather salient fact that he had won the Military Cross not once but twice. He immediately but courteously changed the subject.

Mrs Parker Bowles is upper class - needless to say, for the niece of the 4th Lord Ashcombe - but she hails from precisely that unpretentious, down-to-earth part of the British aristocracy that would never dream of patronising one. Friends of mine who have been on several holidays with her say there is no one more natural and fun. Making people feel at their ease is a vital attribute for a royal, but frankly not one that all the Windsors possess, by any means.

The public is notoriously fickle about individual royals. There were times in the 1980s when both Princess Anne and Princess Margaret were cordially disliked, their every act criticised in the press. There seems to be an unwritten rule that there must always be at least one female royal who get treated in this way by the media. Yet princesses Anne and Margaret wound up being genuinely liked by the public by the late 1990s. ‘Never say never’ is a cardinal rule in politics, and anyone who says - as so many did in radio phone-ins last week - that ‘the public will never forgive Camilla for breaking up Charles’s marriage’ are simply wrong.

Several factors will ensure that the future HRH the Duchess of Cornwall will not remain unpopular forever. The first is that it will soon be generally seen that she can carry herself with dignity. Alone of the three members of the ‘three-person marriage’, Camilla Parker Bowles never gave an interview to Martin Bashir, Jonathan Dimbleby or anybody else. And aside from her work for the National Osteoporosis Society, she does not talk publicly at all, rather like the late Queen Mother. This has allowed her to retain a sense of privacy and dignity - even mystique - that hopefully the Palace will allow her to continue.

As the Diana story inexorably slips from current affairs into recent history and then into proper history, even the emotions of the most virulent Diana worshippers must abate. Each book that appears about her panoply of lovers serves to contrast with the fact that, although of course it was not his wife, Prince Charles was only ever in love with one woman. As that woman’s love for him makes him more and more visibly happy over the years, their domestic life will take on an unremarkable nature that will be Camilla’s secret weapon.

Once the undeniable influence of the establishment is brought round to protecting and promoting the Duchess of Cornwall, rather than opportunistically stripping her of her right to be queen as at present, and once she is seen to shine on the foreign tours she will have to undertake with her husband, the absurdity of the nomenclature arrangements announced last week will be obvious to all.

Camilla Parker Bowles is far more than merely a Mrs Simpson who made it, she is a powerful and wholly positive influence on a complicated man. She alone can soothe his - by all accounts hot - temper, rather in the way the late Queen Mother was able to do for George VI’s ‘gnashes’.

By the time King Charles III comes to be crowned, the title Princess Consort will be seen for what it truly is, an outrageous denial of every British woman’s ancient right to the same rank, status and title as her husband upon marriage. One of the glories of our happily unwritten constitution is that the title can be dropped overnight and the only proper title for the wife of a king can be reinstated, which is Queen.

I am the only person saying it now, but my prediction will be vindicated sooner or later: one day we will all be proud of Her Majesty Queen Camilla.

Andrew Roberts’ book Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble, is published by Harper Collins this week